The Man Who Loved His Wife (9 page)

“Eat your breakfast and don't say such silly things.”

Under the date of September eighteenth there appeared in his diary this item:

Last night R.J. came to swim with us. My wife was all hot and bothered and kept giving me looks that sent shivers up my spine because I knew what was on her mind. She must have felt very guilty because she began to flirt with me like a girl on the make. Later she came to my room in a new nightie that showed everything she has. She praised my physique and said I was more attractive than the younger men and asked if I remembered how we used to hurry home from places in N.Y. and throw our clothes on the floor. But she did not throw that expensive nightgown on the floor. She came to bring me sleeping pills, and when I tried to make love she let me know she was not interested.

He stopped to pace the floor while he pondered the subtleties of the falsehood. No one could deny the facts except Elaine, who would be believed by no one who read the diary after her husband's death.

Elaine came to the library to ask him something, saw the diary open on the desk, remarked that she was glad to see him occupied. Her voice was a shade too cheerful, her eyes darkly circled, her smile an effort. After she had gone he wrote:

Am I wrong to distrust her? Suspicion haunts the guilty mind. But what am I guilty of? I wait like a sitting duck and do nothing to protect myself from the danger that hangs over me. This is because my life has no purpose and the future means nothing any more. When the time comes and she does the desperate act I wonder if I will know and resist. I see into her evil heart but cannot make any move against her because . . .

Here the entry finished. He could not acknowledge love in a document designed to destroy her. And since love had been the only virtue left in his life, his refusal to admit its existence was also an act of destruction. With passion futile, with no activities
to involve mind or body, the man was compelled to reject himself. He became indifferent in other ways, showed little excitement when his stockbroker telephoned from New York to suggest profitable sales or purchases. His only interest was the diary which he read and reread, not as in the first flush of literary pride, but hypnotically as converts read their special scriptures; and like the convert he found belief.

CHILDREN OF THE electronic age, Cindy and Don were unable to live with silence. They always had to have the TV turned on or the radio or record player going. They had a radio in the car and kept a transistor on the table between their beds. Cindy preferred ballads and sentimental songs from recent movies. Don called himself a cat and considered himself an authority on jazz. The walls of the house seemed to quiver with the blasts of horns, the beat of drums. Out of necessity they had to talk loudly.

“Daddy's not taken in anymore,” shouted Cindy over a Thelonious Monk recording. “He sees right through her at last.”

Don had not heard. She had to repeat the statement. This gave her great pleasure. Cindy treasured the memory of her father's assault of his wife with a dish of chocolate mousse.

“What's there to see through?” Don asked.

“Now really! You're not taken in, too?”

“You sound just like your mother.”

“What's wrong about that? My mother's a smart woman. From the very beginning Elaine intrigued him with her body. The attraction was merely physical and poor Daddy paid the price.”

Cindy sounded so like a tape recording of the first Mrs. Strode that Don stiffened as he always did in the presence of that lady. She must have told him fifty times that poor Fletcher's affliction had come as just punishment for the sin of the second marriage.

“If you want my opinion, he despises her.”

“That's not our business,” Don said and tried to concentrate on a sax obbligato.

“What are you getting so snotty about? If it wasn't for her, you wouldn't have to be running around like a racehorse, begging for jobs.”

The drums joined in. Over the music Don shouted, “I'm not begging for anything when I try to make the right contacts. You know perfectly well I could go right back to my job in New York.”

“For peanuts. Who wants to?”

“I'm not so sure,” Don answered haughtily. But he was quite sure. Before they came to California, Don had foreseen a brilliant future in the rapidly growing Los Angeles area. Surely some of these executives new to wealth and power ought to value the services of a clever young Easterner with legal training. If he could get his foot in the door of some solid organization, Don was willing to sacrifice his career as a lawyer. Other men were offered all sorts of opportunities.

Since Nan and Rex Burke had returned from the yachting trip, the young Hustings had been entertained lavishly. New friends had asked Don and Cindy to parties, offered them seats in their boxes at the racetrack, remembered them when they were selling tickets to charity affairs. Many of these people were valuable as business contacts.

“We can't go on forever accepting hospitality without reciprocating. We've got to establish ourselves even if it costs a few dollars.”

It was out of the question for them to entertain in a good restaurant. They simply hadn't the money. “We could do a cocktail thing in the garden. With those fabulous caterers everyone uses,” Cindy suggested.

“What about your father?”

“If only he'd relax a bit. It wouldn't hurt him at all to mix with people . . . I mean . . . Elaine really ought to do something! It's her fault he's so morbid. But he sees through her, Don, I'm positive. Sometimes,” she added with a squeal that topped the drums, “he just acts beastly to her.”

“Let's not suggest a party now. We're stuck here and we've got to do things his way.” Don had sensed intolerance in his
father-in-law and did not want to be insulted with the news that he was no longer a welcome guest in the house. Beneath his suave and gallant manners Don hid a sorely troubled mind. Even Cindy did not know the full extent of the debts he had left in New York. His small supply of cash had dwindled tragically. Although he had no rent to pay, no food to buy, there were still cigarettes and gasoline, service on the car, barber and beauty shop bills; flowers, jars of caviar, boxes of candy and other tokens of gratitude to generous hostesses. When Nan or her friends asked Don and Cindy to buy tickets to charity affairs they could not refuse, and if a few people stopped at a bar, Don had to occasionally pick up the check. They could not afford to be known as freeloaders since Don's career as well as their social future would be affected.

Inevitably when Don and Cindy were trying to have a private talk Elaine would knock at their door. “Please turn down the radio a bit. Not all the way,” she would say apologetically, “but lower. The noise makes your father nervous.”

“If only we had a place of our own,” fretted Cindy.

Quite by accident they found the house.

5

SUMMER HAD GONE AND COME AGAIN. IN THE MIDDLE of October the heat returned, raging. A Santa Ana, the natives called the wind that blew in from the desert with such fury that even the seashore burned. There was no humidity, no decent sweat to relieve fever temperature. Fletcher's wound needed moisture; with every breath he inhaled pain. His temper became insufferable. Elaine suggested that they drive north to Carmel, fly to Hawaii, sail off on any boat that went anywhere. He stamped about the house, grunting, refusing comfort.

To escape the unbearable climate of the house, Don and Cindy drove down to Nan's place at Newport Beach. She had promised that her house would always be open to them, her pool available. They found the doors locked, the gate barred. Too late Cindy remembered that Nan had gone to stay at her father's Lake Arrowhead place while her husband was abroad,
her servants on holiday. It was irksome. She and Don had met a few people with houses in that area, but none whom she could visit without invitation. The shore burned like desert sand, the ocean lay sullen in the glare, the sky was as blue as oxidized copper molded to reflect heat. Although they disliked public beaches, they had to get into the water just to feel alive. Like ordinary people whose friends do not own beach houses, they undressed and left their clothes in the car. After the swim Cindy combed her hair and did her face on the open beach. While their bathing suits dried, they could find no pleasant place to sit, no cafés with tables under parasols, not even a decent cold drink. They walked a long way in search of some place more inviting than the sordid shacks whose signs advertised bottled drinks and whose stoves filled the air with the stink of frying fat and cheap ground meat. A diamond is easier to find on the California shore than a glass of fresh orange juice or real lemonade.

The beach ended in a bluff. Pretending to be gay and beatnik and unconventional, they decided to walk in bathing suits along the highway where they might find an edible sandwich. They ascended a narrow street. A sign caught their eye: FOR SALE—UNUSUAL—A BARGAIN. The house was only a few feet up a narrow lane, tree-shaded and secluded; a perfect gem, adorable, divine, irresistible and not expensive; less than forty-five thousand dollars. Forty-four, nine hundred and fifty. A few miles up the coast, where Nan lived, a narrow lot cost seventy-five thousand. Without the house. This was ideal for a young couple, the sort of unpretentious place they could explain to people who lived in two-hundred-thousand-dollar houses as “cozy” and “completely private.” It was only five years old, authentic California modern with a flat roof, two sun decks, glass walls all over the place. There was no pool, merely the ocean for swimming, but they could maintain status by reminding their friends that they had come from the East, had spent their summers on the Atlantic and preferred surf bathing. The house was offered at this absurd price because the owner, a young executive who was transferred to his company's Ohio branch, wanted to sell immediately. For a down payment of only five thousand dollars
they could own the house. They were almost naked, Don in the trunks, Cindy wearing a few inches of a bikini, but the owners of the house at once recognized them as the right sort and said they would be happy to have their home occupied by such nice people. Don mentioned casually that Nan's father would arrange the financing. Cindy added that the famous banker's daughter was her closest friend. The effect was magic, the house practically theirs.

Hand in hand, like enchanted children, they raced along the beach to fetch their clothes and car. “Just think, a home of our own. We can entertain,” Cindy said, “informally, of course, but with chic.” She saw a dining table in an ell that faced the sunset; laid it with wedding presents of china and silver stored now in her mother's basement; clothed herself in a fabulous cotton hostess gown and welcomed guests who simply adored her new house. Don thought barbecue dinners a better way of entertaining. Over watery coffee and plastic-wrapped sandwiches they argued about the sort of parties they would give.

They had been too hungry and too impatient to look for a decent place, so had settled on a so-called beach café where food and drinks were thrust over a counter at barefoot customers who, if they were lucky enough to get a table, could sit down while they ate. At this hour only one other table was occupied. A pair of foreigners in dark glasses spoke an ugly guttural language.

“What's the soonest we could move in, Don?”

Don bit into his sandwich, grimaced, said, “Well, I guess that settles it. We're staying in California definitely.”

Cindy's sandwich might have been of glue or caviar, smoked turkey or cardboard. She was too excited to taste mere food. “Do you think we can use the Hitchcock chairs and the hutch in a modern house?” She had inherited the antiques from her maternal grandmother.

“Maybe I can land that job with Carter Consolidated.” Don rode his own train of thought. “I'll try to see Doug Third in the morning. He told me his grandfather was looking desperately for the right man, and promised to make an appointment.
There's a future in that outfit.” He saw himself at an executive's desk in an air-conditioned office with wall-to-wall carpeting, a beautiful secretary, and his name on the door. A group of young Negroes invaded the shack, took possession of the empty tables, crowded their brown bodies into the narrow space. They ordered hamburgers. A greasy smog drifted from the grill. Laughter and guttural foreign syllables interrupted Don's dreams of executive importance and Cindy's plans for entertaining millionaires.

When they returned they found the house prettier than they remembered. Imagination had made it their own. The owner's wife suggested that they change their clothes in a bedroom where they had a private moment, a naked embrace in the lustful thought that this pretty chamber would be their own. While Cindy took her own good time to redo her hair and face, Don discussed details of the transaction. The owner's agent lived close by and had been summoned by telephone.

Arrangements were the usual ones. A deposit of one thousand dollars would put the house in escrow. When these proceedings had been completed, Don would pay the additional four thousand and the house would be his. “Unfortunately,” he said gaily, “I haven't a thousand dollars on me, and I didn't bring my checkbook to the beach.”

No one expected him to pay on sight. A house is not purchased like a cake of soap. Impatient to make a deal, the agent suggested that they meet the next morning at the escrow department of a bank in downtown Los Angeles. Don remarked that deals of that sort were simpler in the East where no escrow formalities were demanded, and people simply bought and sold without having to wait while a third party held the buyer's money and searched the seller's title.